Imagine RIT News

“The Future of Technology, the Arts and Design,” the first-ever symposium and panel discussion of its kind held during Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival, showcased what RIT alumni envision for next 50 years related to technology, the arts and design and how we can leverage its power for the greater good.

There’s always something new to experience at the Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival, which this year featured more than 400 exhibits, including a human hamster wheel, performances by student ensembles, cutting-edge video games and demonstrations to determine how color can affect your mood.

This year’s Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation began Friday evening, with scores of university students letting their talent shine in front of an appreciative crowd during Dr. Munson’s Performing Arts Challenge. First place went to The Roar’s for a rousing rendition of “Feeling Good,” which the band patterned after a Michael Bublé performance of the song.

The 12th annual Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival kicks off at 6 tonight in Ingle Auditorium with Dr. Munson’s Performing Arts Competition. Then, tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., we pull back the curtain on creativity and innovation with some 400 interactive exhibits in science, technology, engineering, the arts and more, plus live entertainment.

The big wheel will turn, but the hamsters will be humans instead. Students in RIT’s Engineering House built a Human Hamster Wheel, and instead of running in circles, as the cliché goes, their 7-foot wheel will produce electricity. Open to children and adults, the wheel will be one of many interactive exhibits featured at this year’s Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival on April 27.  

An interactive, drop-in workshop at Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival on April 27 will introduce visitors of all ages to a popular form of independent, immediate publishing. It’s not the Internet; it’s the zine (“zeen”).

Imagine RIT visitors interested in learning about electric and hybrid-electric bikes get to participate in an interactive exhibit and discussion on the growing travel mode inside the Golisano Institute for Sustainability on April 27.

A team of computing security students will demonstrate how the unique properties that exist in the radio waves of a wireless device can allow a third-party to single out, fingerprint and track that specific Wi-Fi device during the Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival on Saturday.

Imagine RIT visitors will help keep the skies above RIT clear during the festival on April 27, in a new video game on display at the MAGIC Spell Studios building. Festivalgoers can play “Weather Defense: A Two Stories High Video Wall Game” on six large 4K displays, mounted two stories up the atrium wall of the new 52,000-square-foot MAGIC building.

When the Seneca Park Zoo Society needed a way to create detailed 3D computer models of rare insects from Madagascar, they turned to RIT’s imaging science program for help. A multidisciplinary team of first-year students designed and built a new system to tackle the problem and will showcase the final product at the Imagine RIT festival.

The Rochester Beacon features Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival.

Proving that RIT students are stars not only inside the classroom but on the stage as well, President David Munson will emcee his second performing arts competition next Friday night on the eve of the Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival.